The fringe can always be found. Just pop into your corner bar or nightclub, it will be there tonight. Likewise, In our own individual lives, we have an exploratory fringe phase, or phases, plural. Or maybe you lucked out and went straight from middle school into grandmotherly virtue. But I didn’t. And if you doubt that we need to explore, and the corner bar or nightclub doesn’t prove it to you, just stroll through a humanities building at any university and witness future moms and dads who are actively calling for revolution. These same world-changers, in less than a decade, will be climbing corporate ladders, carting kids around, and defending and protecting the very institutions they want to see collapse. They may even be worshipping in a church and witnessing to you. (Like…ahem…hypocrites like me.)

The “age of reason” or “loss of innocence” demands exploration, for if we don’t at least taste the fruit of the forbidden tree, then the desire to gorge will likely emerge twisted and deformed later on in life. I cannot help but see this in the Garden of Eden story and in Jesus’ own repeated reference to being “reborn” and returning to the faith of a child. Maturing in plants and animals requires massive change and emergence, and for us it requires asking questions and facing the great questions of life, as in: “Why am I here, where am I going, where did I come from, what is real, what is true, what is good?” Then once you get through that post-adolescent idealistic period and wake up a parent, you know why you are here. Parents confuse childless adults in this, and the childless adult can never fully understand what it means until they themselves have a child. It is a bridge too far to cross.

The great questions in life are answered by doing what you are supposed to do. It’s really simple in the end and Jesus said things that were so obvious that it seems bizarre that God himself had to come here and tell us. The secret is this: to grow, to marry, to have a family, and to return to our Creator. In the beginning, our body reaches while our soul is quiet. In the end, our body quiets while our soul reaches. The little clones of yourself called children provide the answer in the middle. Staring up at you with big eyes, they need you to provide dinner. While you cook you might grumble, but that is the meaning of life. There is a very simple saying from Jesus that captures it:

“If a grain of wheat dies, it bears much fruit.”

The wheat must die to fulfill its purpose, which is what? Obviously a wheat plant is not intended to live forever, or there will be no more wheat. If a wheat plant remained locked in adolescence, no wheat seeds would form on top. That’s called a dud. Now there are very different causes of failure to bloom in plants, some of which are not the plants fault but have more to do with environment, soil, timing. Those plants suffer the same burden as people who cannot reproduce, and for people this is an awful realization. However, today we have many healthy plants who choose not to flower, who refuse to bloom by choice. This is a very different kind of problem than those who cannot bloom because of a physical or environmental reason. Those who want to have children but cannot must bear a kind of suffering that the perpetual adolescent-by-choice cannot understand.

The purpose of a wheat plant is to give up itself in order to make wheat. That is the answer. That is the secret of life. It’s not what Faith Hill tells us in the country song, “The Secret of Life,” a song that has always eluded me to having a single insight into any secret. The secret of life is not Monday Night Football and a good cup of coffee. The secret is living to maturity and then dying to self. The secret of life is giving yourself away in the end for your spouse, family, country but ultimately for God. The secret of life is becoming what you are made for, and finding your vocation, whether it be married or consecrated single or priest. Not all acorns become an oak tree, but that is the intended aim. As for Monday Night Football, that hasn’t even been around for fifty years. However, for 30,000 years humans have survived and replicated without football. Even the idea of a “good cup of coffee” is only about 500 years old, so there is no case to be made that the secret of life has anything to do with Starbucks or Folgers. The secret of life is to become what you are, not what you imagine. Today we have acorns that declare themselves as lemon trees. Contentment comes with realizing the purpose of life, and even if all people do not have children or get married, they can fulfill God’s will in many other ways.

Our lives have the exact same purpose as that of animals and plants and even skin cells, in that we are to grow, survive, reproduce, and die. Hard to hear? Yes. How can death be something to celebrate? Because we forget this rudimentary fact. Jesus had to remind us of something so basic that the simplicity of his profound message is incredible all by itself! The reason that pride is the root sin of all disorder is because it drives us away from our telos, our purpose, so that we think our life is about our moment in the sun and not our children and living through the seasons of life. The reason the shiny one convinced Eve to eat the apple was by telling her that we would become like God in a snap. That’s the whole story of sin. When we desire what is not ours, what is not our purpose, we get out of season. We become a cancer cell, which is a little structure that rejects that there is a season for all things. We actually can become more like God, but there is no shortcut. It requires patience and suffering, since that is the model that Jesus demonstrates for us.

"There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. A time to give birth, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to reap." (Ecc 3:1-2)

Forgetting the last part, the dying to self, the reaping, is arguably missing the most important part, otherwise you just remain a self-absorbed overgrown child. And in terms of biology, a cell that doesn’t die when it should becomes a cancer cell. Cancer is the refusal to complete the cycle of life. Perhaps instead of telling someone to “act your age,” we should advise them not to be a cancer cell.

A cancer cell happens by missing the signals that should guide its tiny life. By missing prompts, by receiving incorrect signals, by evading messaging, and by “sticking” to a phase that it should move on from, a cell becomes cancerous. Like plants, this can happen due to environment and nutrient issues, but the story is the same. You can blow up this metaphor into the life of a person that refuses to grow up or gets stuck in a rut or is forever seeking or thinks he will live forever. A “normal” cell knows that “unless a grain of wheat die, it cannot bear much fruit,” but a cancer cell declares, “I am the fruit!” And by losing its telos, its purpose, in the body, the cancer cell proceeds to kill the body.

This is what sin does. Cancer is disorder. And sin is our spiritual cancer, founded on our pride, telling us that we are the fruit, we are the good thing, we are the god who should live forever. Pride is always what causes us to miss the signal, to evade the message, to get stuck in a phase, and to think that the ego is what life is all about.

The simple "falls" of Genesis, that seem so childish, so mythical, are apparent in our own lives and our own neighborhoods if we take a minute to observe. The more we try to pretend the “fall” doesn't exist or, conversely, the more we affirm ourselves as being beautiful in every single way, the worse it gets.

I hate to say this, but the Prodigal Son actually needs a place to go get drunk and try to hookup. So does the Woman at the Well. Here’s the thing: if we never get lost, we’ll never be found. How can we be found if we never get lost? In the end, both of these people, the Prodigal and the Woman at the Well, are cured by their excess. But they can't be healed until they either outlive or fully explore their empty desires. Unfortunately this can cause big waves for others in the wake of their self-exploration. The illusions offered by pleasure, honor, wealth, and power seduce them, but by consuming that spiritual junkfood they come to realize the emptiness more completely and understand fully why a savior is needed. Those who go astray may be the first ones found. Those who never leave, who never stray, may never realize that they are lost. But we all get lost. It’s a guarantee. No matter how safe you think you are, you will get lost somewhere along your path through time and space. And you can lose sight of God in a locked one-room apartment just as easily as you can hitchhiking like a highway drifter.

Yes, the Prodigals could pray it away, but they don’t. They won’t. Because it doesn’t work like that. Commanding faith in others is exactly how Communist governments work. In other words, it doesn’t work. It sounds good, but it’s impossible for someone to believe unless God draws them. For whatever reason, God gives us trials, allows us free will, and lets each of us walk a path that leads to him. Then when he’s ready, the shepherd comes to find us. Some seed of rebellion and exploration is planted in our minds by a spirit, compelling us to explore, and then later God starts giving signs to us as he exorcises the demon and proves us in the trial. He “burns away the dross” so that we can be pure silver through these trials. Many are guided down the wrong path, by friends or relatives or bad circumstances, but some of us go searching for casino and bar without any nudge. As for those who steer us into bad patterns, this is where Jesus warns those who mislead the “little ones.” I always wonder when I hear this: is Jesus talking about other people, or the demons that suggest bad ideas to those people?

As far as learning to pray, how many are even taught today? So few have any exposure to it, and the closest thing to prayer being mass marketed now is yoga class, which teaches self-worship. The Prodigals can’t get to prayer because they don’t know the way. And for many who are lost in the search, even if they did know how, they won’t until they are ready. As St. Augustine said, “Lord, let me be chaste, but not yet.”

We have many books and media marketing in place convincing us all that happiness must come through a product or experience that will fulfill the self. Our desires, we are told, is who we are. This is the worst advice imaginable. Sure, another trophy will do it, another notch on the bedpost, another million dollars in the bank, another drink, another toke. How can we take any of this seriously? Of course more of the same will not satisfy. It’s more…of the same.

The cruel trick or glorious revelation, depending on your point of view, happens to the Prodigal Son and the Woman at the Well. When they get what they want, they learn in the end that what they wanted...wasn't what they wanted at all. What they wanted was love, and the drinking and the sex failed to give it. You can see this happen the same way in people who buy a new boat or house. The experience or the possession fail to deliver. A 350 horsepower boat is not as fast or powerful as a twin-engine 400 horsepower boat. But neither boat will fill the hole that the boat is trying to fill.

Both the Prodigal Son and the “Woman at the Well” end their stories in a “drop the nets” moment like Peter and Andrew. When they catch all the fish that they thought they wanted, they suddenly realize it was not about the fish. And they drop the nets and the fish like a bad habit. They leave everything to follow Jesus. Because He is what they were looking for. Finding him, they were done looking. Forever. They could suddenly rest and stop searching. They wanted something greater than their desires, more than things or experiences of this world could ever provide, and they found it in a fully-human and fully-divine person named Jesus. Who would have thought - they found it in a construction worker. Perhaps we should all think of that as we drive by these invisible men in hard hats and dirty clothes who stand on scaffolding and roofs and trusses in our cities and towns.

Rebellion plays out. But it always leads to the same end where the vapid false freedom of “doing whatever I want” proves empty and meaningless. Given that this exploration will happen, whether we like the idea or not, there is reason to allow an outlet for people to go and explore this rebellion, because all must explore, and some are going to do it much more than others. Law and order is required to keep it within reason. One thing proven over and over is that the more you clamp down on this balloon of rebellion, the stranger the manifestation of rebellion that squirts out. There is no reason to encourage rebellion, but there is also no denying it will happen. Bad desires are like infections that must be treated early, ideally by talking rather than doing. Many are guided and pointed down a wrong path and may not have known of other choices. Some will have a good guide and be pointed in the right direction, and even many of these will not heed sound advice because the call of the Fall is so strong.

You can’t keep Rapunzel hidden in the tower in the woods forever. The argument against censorship of children preaches this, and like most fairy tales, it rings true to some extent. However, there is a reverse story happening today where the Prince takes Rapunzel out of the tower too soon, when she’s about five, and drops her off at Hastings Avenue in Vancouver, B.C. at midnight. The argument against censorship has created our current state of the world, where ideas arrive in children’s brains via the wild west of smart phones long before those brains are ready for it, and now it has been blessed by policymakers in the public schools. This, too, is very Biblical. We have seen this before. Whenever I hear someone toss out the Bible as bronze-age nonsense or goat-herder tales of yore, I am instantly assured they have not properly understood it, and they are likely reading Genesis, Exodus, Judges, etc as science books or history books rather than as a tour through the heart of every human who ever lived.

Giving dangerous things to humans before they are prepared is one of the primary ideas in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve are told that they can skip all the steps of growing to be like God. No, they are promised a shortcut. And who doesn’t want that? That is our nature. When faced with preparing a proper dinner or microwaving a frozen pizza, I have often chose the latter. I want what is easy, and available…like right now. This is what the fruit represents to Adam and Eve. This is the first example of our modern obsession for instant gratification.

They can leap ahead in time by eating the fruit, without any need for maturity at all. This is the same defense people are offering today for psychedelic drugs as the way to transcendence. The drug is promised as the superhighway to God, but like every shortcut it comes with unintended consequences. The superhighway does not provide the same journey, as you only see the billboards and gas stations, whereas the slow path through the woods gives intangible rewards like grace and wisdom. The difference between reaching for transcendence through, say, magic mushrooms versus doing the Rosary is that in the first one you are the subject and in the second one, you fade away completely in favor of God and the Blessed Mother.

The serpent offers them the fruit as knowledge of good and evil so that they may be like God. But what happens surprises them. They do not become like God. They become fallen. They would have been better off locked in Rapunzel’s tower for a longer period, as they were not ready for the devil’s tempting. Their bootstrapping has led to them being strung out, just like every drug does, and they are now in a bad state, kicked out of the garden for disobedience, and ultimately for their own good as they cannot be in the place of holiness, as the Garden of Eden translates to “where God is.” Thus, they have to suffer because they cannot handle living “where God is” just yet. They need time to grow.

We have the two extremes of total censorship versus total exposure. As usual, a balance is somewhere in the middle, because total lockdown of Rapunzel leads to a wild child who can tell lies really, really well, and total exposure puts her at risk of growing up way too fast for her brain chemistry to catch up. In either case, the fall happens. Every person “falls.” But you may be able to soften the landing.

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